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With the ship moving swiftly towards the furthest warp point, Mack put a second call through to Skymander. He flagged it urgent, but none of us quite expected the image that came on screen, when Skymander answered.
The lord was not in the lounge he usually took calls in. In fact, I couldn’t tell where he was. It looked like he was standing in a doorway, with his back to a much larger room. He was also far from his well-groomed norm. His hair was in wild disarray, his jacket buttoned oddly, and he was breathing heavily as though he’d just run a race... or fought a battle.
“My lord, are you okay?” Mack asked, and Skymander blushed.
“Fine,” he said in a tone that discouraged further enquiry, as he quickly changed the subject. “You said it was urgent.”
“We must close our contract early.”
Skymander frowned, and his color subsided.
“You wish to make the delivery, early?”
“We are on our way.”
“Stand clear of the warp point. We are coming to you.”
Skymander ended the call, and Mack looked to Case. He ended up saying nothing, but the navcom showed us slowing, and I felt the ship give an almost imperceptible shudder.
“Keep the crew in their pods,” Mack said. “Tens. Are the fire teams in position?”
“Done.”
“Keep the weapons off-line, but stand-by with the shields. I don’t want to send the wrong message.”
“Done.”
“If anyone needs the head, now’s the time.”
We went, but not all at once. No one wanted to get caught short, but none of us knew how long it would take for the Skymander’s Flag to appear through the jump point. Personally, I hadn’t thought he was that close, but that depended on the speed he’d anticipated travelling at, when he’d said he wouldn’t be at High Costral for three standard days.
If he decided he needed to go faster, who knew how much he could cut that time by.
Case steadied the ship at a safe distance from the warp point, and I wondered how Skymander knew where we’d be. What if we had our warp points mixed? There was at least one other way into and out of the solar system.
“Not from the direction he’s travelling in,” said Mack.
I thought he might be about to explain, but Tens interrupted.
“Incoming. Stand by.”
We stood... not literally, but we waited, and then something began to emerge from the warp point, and our boards lit up.
“Case, back her off. Tens, keep those weapons tied down, and check for port breach.”
Port breach?
My boards showed nothing, but they weren’t hooked into security. I used the implant to hot-step across to Tens’ security array, and pulled the feed into my head.
“Holy fuck,” I murmured, but Tens, Mack and Case all ignored me; they were far too busy: Case, because she was getting the ship out of collision range; Tens, because there were flashes of yellow flaring and fading throughout the ship; and Mack because he was overseeing it all.
I touched nothing, but I watched everything, and plotted several course resolutions Case could use if she needed them. These I sent over to her console, as I watched the big ship roll in, and saw patches of red begin to bloom along the hull.
“Get those, Cutter,” Tens said, and I watched another dozen amber flares go live on the lower decks.
I didn’t bother asking how Tens knew I was in his system. I didn’t care. No doubt we’d be having words about that when this crisis was over. Right now, I needed to make sure those comms mines didn’t get their greasy little claws into our ship’s systems.
Suweet!
Tens had loaded some pretty good protection into the defensive array. I tweaked two of them and watched the red blotches shard to nothing. That didn’t help with the alert for an all-systems intrusion coming through the comms lines.
“Fuck!” which only goes to show that Tens is as potty-mouthed as I am when he’s under pressure.
I didn’t need him to tell me which line of green needed to be dealt with, first. Tens was still working to repel another wave of amber, and I didn’t want to know what was happening to the men and women trying to teleport in. I sure as shit doubted they were being returned to their point of origin.
“Where I can, Cutter. Where I can,” and Tens sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth.
I chased down the first wave of green, blocking it with a hastily thrown program designed to act like a dam wall, which blocked and then dissipated the attacking code. The first one worked, and I flicked a second out and into the path of the other attack.
That one didn’t work so well, the attack pile-driving through the block, and continuing to the ship’s central processor.
“For fuck’s sake, lock it down!” and I didn’t need an explanation to know that Tens was talking to me.
The first stream was stopped, but that second stream was operating in a more aggressive format. Not entirely my beast, but, whatever. I guessed whoever was running the code was used to meeting defenses head on, which meant they could probably outgun me in the coding department, which meant I should try something different—and I probably couldn’t take them on in the aggression department, either.
Right, so subtle it was.
I let the code go past me, so to speak, ignoring Tens’ squawk of frustration as another three teleport attempts blossomed and failed. As the line of green slid by, infiltrating further into the system and heading for the security section, I slammed a worm into the center of it, and let the damn thing, loose, limiting its spread to the aggressor code, and ordering it to dissipate once the target coding was gone.
I watched as the green stream broke into slivers, and then sharded to nothing.
“Nice work,” Tens breathed, and we waited for the next attack.
Case kept the ship backing away from the behemoth coming through the gate, and I sent her a revised plot, one that took her through the wormhole, if she needed it. None of us were really ready for the brief flash of a half-formed figure that appeared and then disappeared from the control room. We definitely weren’t prepared for the secondary flash that put Tens’ console out of commission.
“Down!” Mack shouted, and we dived beneath our consoles, even Case, although the ship suddenly rolled to the left, and I guessed she’d hooked into the controls with her implant and was planning on flying it blind.
“Not good,” I muttered, but I didn’t see that she had much choice.
“Perfect,” said Skymander, from the center of the command center, and I peered out from under the console to see him standing in the center of a circle of heavily armed men. “I see I chose a worthy team.”
I might have answered that, except there was another line of green racing for the ship’s core system, and I was having none of it. I threw down a blocker, and then tried for the same sneaky side-shot that I’d tried before. This time, the virus bounced off and then blew apart, and I had to think of something new.
Bastard, I thought, and let loose one of the hound-dog programs Rohan had given me. The intrusion software turned, and faced up to the doggie, the two code constructs circling each other for all the world like two dogs sizing each other up for a fight.
“Not a bad analogy,” Skymander said, but it wasn’t him that had stooped beneath the counter to press a Blazer 54 up tight against my rib cage. “Mack?”
“Stand down, Cutter.”
I caught the eye of the guardsman, holding the Blazer, and hoped Skymander wasn’t made of the same stuff that had formed Marl and Bendigo. I was tired of having to grow bits back.
“Out.”
The guardsman moved back, taking the Blazer with him, and I followed, moving slowly out from where I’d taken cover. When I straightened up, I found that Mack, Tens, and Case were already standing behind their consoles, their hands raised.
“Troublemaker,” Tens whispered, inside my head, and I rolled my eyes, lifting my own hands, and stepping away from the controls.
I looked to Mack, and noticed he hadn’t taken his eyes off Skymander and his bodyguards.
“You could have asked permission to board,” Mack said, and Skymander arched an eyebrow.
“Now, where would be the strength in that? I told you I was coming. You should have been standing by.”
“That is not our custom,” Mack told him, but he did not elaborate.
Skymander chose not to pursue it.
“We will take you on board,” he said, and I thought we were about to be teleported, but then he explained. “Once your ship is safely in the docking bay, I will escort the Lady Melari aboard the Flag.”
Mack gave him a look that hid all feeling from his face.
“As your Lordship wishes,” he said, and lowered his hands.
Around the control center, the rest of us did the same, but we all kept our hands away from our weapons. We were outgunned, and outmaneuvered, and these boys had us dead to rights.
The Shady Marie rocked slightly, correcting the tilt. Mack, Tens, Case and I shuffled our feet as it repositioned itself, and then, again, when a shudder rocked through the ship, and the sound of metal on metal sounded through the hull.
“Docking clamps,” Skymander said, and I tried to access the ship’s feeds to see where we were.
Well, that resulted in a splitting headache. Looks like the green creeper had gotten through, after all.
“When you’re quite finished,” Skymander said, and I came out of my head to find myself the focus of everyone’s attention.
“Sure,” I told him. “Go ahead. Be my guest. I mean—”
“Cutter!” Mack snapped, and I shut my mouth.
Boss man looked pissed. Skymander? Not so much. He turned to Mack.
“Docking is complete. You will take me to my future bride.”
If she survives, I thought, but what the hell ever. Mack shot me a glance that might have scorched paint, if I’d have cared. I didn’t. Not on this matter, and he knew it. When it came to Melari, I’d never met someone so eager to go to the torture chamber.
“Cutter!”
I winced, and Skymander caught the movement.
“By all means,” he said, indicating Tens and me, “bring your shadows.”
Shadow, huh? I shot a glance at Tens, but his expression gave me nothing, and Mack just looked bemused. I figured if Skymander had smacked him between the eyes with a large plank of wood, the effect would have been much the sa...
I caught Mack’s next look.
Okay, if Skymander had whacked him with a large plank of wood, maybe Mack would have looked a bit different. He shook his head, and turned to our self-invited guest.
“This way, my lord,” and I’d never heard Mack quite so deferential.
“I’ll explain it, later, using crayon and a large sheet of paper,” he said, where only I could hear it.
Mack led Skymander through the corridors to the Lady Melari’s quarters. I was surprised to see she was packed and waiting, even more surprised to discover a female nurse standing to one side of her, and two of Mack’s female security guards standing on the other.
“My Lord,” Melari said, and dropped into a deep curtsey as soon as Skymander stepped through the door.
“My beloved lady,” Skymander replied, extending his hand, palm upwards, so that she could take it, “I have come to take you where I need you to go next.”
The Lady Melari rose out of her curtsey, and slipped her arm through the arm Skymander offered.
“As my lord commands,” she replied, her voice the barest whisper of sound, and Skymander signaled for Mack to lead him back through the ship.
“Take us to the main airlock,” he said, “and remain aboard your ship. Full control will be returned to you, when we have returned you to open space.”
When they had what? But I caught the slight wrinkle to Mack’s brow, and kept my mouth firmly closed.
